How Hard Can It Be - Devising an Opera through authentic movement? Part 1

Uh.  I don't know the answer yet, of course, but I hope to begin to find out soon.

Narrative


Anyone who's done even a small amount of improvisation work knows how narrative can develop out of small gestures, accidental movements and events, focus on loose score - e.g. 3 positions, 3 movements, 3 sounds, and solo, duet, trio and larger ensemble play.  Our group has been at the stage of self discovery, and in the third workshop, which three of us indulged, revelled and enjoyed ourselves in yesterday, some new improvisation tools and strategies were tried.  These, together with the self knowledge and knowledge we've gained of working with one another, resulted in delightful, amusing, performable pieces which included sound - phonation.  A great place to arrive at.  It was such a shame more of our group couldn't make it.  I know they would have loved it too.

It seems logical to me that the group is now in a position to go into improvisation around a theme - we can see what emerges from it.  As we are all older women and the movement is all from within, any narrative resulting is relevant to ourselves and other older women.  It has it's own qualities and riches.  I'd like to tease that out a little more at some time and explore themes that occur in the lives of older Western women.  That's to come.

Singing - Head Down or Body Out? Some of the Choices


No, I don't mean singing with one's head dangling between the knees or exploding bodies emitting one final pitch.  I'll try to explain this approach I'm trying out.

What is Opera?

I'd love it if readers posted here what Opera is for them.  Or email me and tell me so I can paste your definitions in here?  Email itsPOWOW@gmail.com.

To me, Opera is dramatic sung narrative which can be heard clearly in larger venues without amplification of singers or musicians.  I also believe Opera can also be dramatic sung narrative delivered in more intimate settings, but I still feel that acoustic delivery is part of the intimacy that creates the interest and relationship between performers and audience.  I wonder, if dramatic sung narrative is performed in a smaller performance space, does it cease to be Opera?  I follow Opera Anywhere on Twitter - here's a link to their website http://www.operaanywhere.com/.  They say, they perform Opera anywhere in cafes, on riverboats ...

Singing Style Choices

Bel Canto or classical vocal production is a style of singing that safely ensures that a singer can be heard in a large auditorium or performance space and over the sound of an orchestra or instrumental ensemble, where the beauty of the vocal instrument can be enjoyed with pitches or notes sounded on open vowel sounds with consonants lightly separating the vowel sounds to make an individual, meaningful word that's tied together to the next word so making a phrase.  It takes many years to become a truly competent Opera singer.  I'm not there yet, having been studying since late 2004/early 2005.  I've had some breaks in my classical vocal studies and so progress has been a little slow.  I digress.   

The participants in my workshops may or may not have sung anything in performance before.  They may have different preferred styles of singing.  If they are singers, they may have teachers who guide their vocal discovery and mastery of themselves and their instrument.  For these reasons I'm not imposing a singing style or setting out 'rules''; rather I'm trusting the route, the flow ...

authentic movement or gesture, sound, singing

to allow the body to adjust to permit singing.  We'll find out what and how much movement disrupts singing and make small adjustments to permit the singing quality we desire without quashing the original authentic feeling or movement.  We'll feel our way through voicing to song.

Head Down - Number 1 - Yuk

I'm aware I'm very careful in even using the word 'sing' or 'singing' as I believe we all have such loaded ideas of what this entails and we have strong feelings and thoughts about our capacities and talents in this activity that these very thoughts get in our own way.  We have thoughts, some of which create tension and this tension interferes with the body's natural adjustments in singing, which may create a less than pleasing outcome, only serving to reinforce the negative idea we had in the first place!  Here is the first instance illustrating how Head Down refers to activity in the head influencing what happens down and into the body.

Head Down - Number 2 - Uh?

I considered the process I experience in learning an aria or song.  If I learn something by ear and I have an emotional connection to the piece I'm listening to I can go some way to remembering and replicating what I hear.  When I first had lessons I believed I was replicating what I heard but then I found that what the teacher heard was different than I thought I was sounding.  The first awareness of that difference and of the necessity to learn to hear what the teacher was hearing.  Of course, I was only remembering a particular artist's version of a song.  If I want to make a song my own, or to be true to the composer's wishes I'd best to refer to the written music.

Many people learn new material through a combination of obtaining recordings, hearing live performances and then obtaining the music score, libretto, sheet music.  Once we have the notation we can check out the time signature, time values of the notes, pitches, intervals, rests, performance directions, words.  We can address technical challenges, mark breathing opportunities and lastly (it seems) imbue meaning, interpretation and artistry.  A problem I have with this is that all of this very interesting, stimulating and intriguing communication from composer to singer involves a great deal of thought and concentration.  I wonder how you breath when you think, study, wonder, worry, puzzle, try etc?  As reading music comes fairly slowly to me, even now, the mental activity involved gets in the way of the singing activity.

Head Down - Number 3 - Arrgghhh!

The approach of learning to sing by standing in front of a teacher, with or without piano or keyboard, instantly fills me with some tension which I have to release.  Trying to remember all the good postural advice, the excellent technical advice, wrestling with pure vowels, diphthongs, vowel adjustments, mouth shapes, tongue positions, fitting in those consonants, breath types, onset types, what to do with your perineum - having all the voices of all the singing teachers in one's head and trying hard to get it right can all get in the way!  I utterly respect my singing teachers.  They can do what they are asking me to do.  They had to learn too in much the same way and so they are proof that their methods work.  For me I need something else as well.

Head Down - Number 4 - Nah!

Congruity, plausibility, engagement, emotional believability, transporting, carrying, journeying - these are some of the qualities I adore in some singing performances.  The artistry that comes once the technical groundwork has been mastered, the glorious icing on the already delicious cake.  I wonder, if this last layer were somehow the first, whether the experience of learning to sing, learning a piece to sing, enlivening a piece to sing, making a piece to sing personal, fresh, meaningful, whether it wouldn't be an altogether more intuitive, body centred, playful activity.  That's the essence of this enquiry really.

Body Out

I've been writing a longish time now.  I'm a bit tired and stale and so I feel I must end for this session.  There's much I'd like to say about Body Out - voice rooted in authenticity.  I'll write more about that after this Saturday's first vocal production workshop with Pip Jones.